As for the the rest of us, we can be thankful he has, as yet, not ventured some institution for the mentally retarded and exercised his journalistic talents on the inmates.

I don’t know what I detest the most about your article and comments: The pretentious pseudo intellectual tripe (which acts as a veneer for…) or the blatant hate-filled yet self-righteous message. I move in academic circles here in Canada, and no-one would get away with this kind of prejudiced writing. Plus, Mr. Howard seems bent on impressing us with his use of a thesaurus – while it is clear he does not have much to say except celebrate the inexcusable vitriol flowing form Mr. McNally’s pen. Please Mr. Howard, realize that most people on this forum can see through your “Queen’s English”. Your anger and hatred is as clear as day.

That being said however, I cherish the idea of an Afrikaans homeland, where all the racists can club together and stay away from the rest of us that would prefer to move on, I cherish the idea of watching rugby at Loftus in PEACE without hearing comments and mockery about how we stole everything and now we want to take their sport as well!
If people want to act silly and suffer alone in the desert then let them be,atleast the rest of us wont have to deal with them!

Despite that I myself would not be allowed to live in Orania, as a white english man, I feel they have a right to preserve their threatened culture. They are living on private land. You came to them – they didn’t come to you.

What I’m left wondering is what your true motive is for such an insulting hit piece. Do you really feel so much hatred in your heart towards them, or are you simply trying to “prove” that you aren’t a racist by bashing those you accuse of racism?

Regardless of your motive, this article is journalistic career suicide.

Thanks for allowing the comments to be published though, both positive and negative. I must admit that both Johann Eksteen and John seem more level headed than yourself.

If Orania wasn’t so far from Cape Town I would love to visit. And, unlike yourself, I would happily pay for my meals and stay at a guest house.

What right do you have to be concerned with the Afrikaner paradigm? You clearly are not one of us, nor are you concerned for our wellbeing as clearly displayed by your long winded, excessively verbose tirade. So what then is it about our changing paradigm that concerns you? From the sliver of sense I was able to scrape from your pathetic rant, your issue is with Afrikaners seeing our history and culture in a positive sense. In other words, we must forever remain meek, sackcloth wearing, jannie-jammer-gat, sorry-we’re-alive drones just so that we fit easily into your little liberal “cosmopolitan” box?? God help us if we dare stray over the thought boundaries you and your ilk have so generously carved out for us.

I’ll have you know there is more than one political paradigm in this world and your intolerance for an alternative view is, quite frankly, disgusting. Especially from a so-called educator. Go peddle your social-anthropological, free-thought suppressing tripe to another ethno-cultural population group. We will define our identity in any way we choose! And if the current political trend is anything to go by (amongst Afrikaners), then I can assure you I am not alone in my views.

But of course I digress… no what worries me is the positivist revisionism of the Oranian paradigm and what it is postulates for Afrikanerdom as a cultural entity in the context of a post-modern cosmopolitan understanding of the retention of localized identity within the shadow of a political transition away from traditional forms of ethnic chauvinism. Indeed, the post-Hegalian move away from the identification of identity principles as part of a conceivable ethnology (or a ‘biocultural-nology’ if you will) seems conjoined to this reality. In light of this connection, what concerns me is the deep counter-alternative to contemporary norms of cosmopolitanism that Orania-ism seems to symbolize.

Oh and please call me Dave.

So let us deal with your criticisms in turn. You are correct that the ‘Afrikaner republics’ did not habour large legally defined slave populations. But we must understand this as a shift in the social and political construction of labour subordination in the context of the trekkers adopted ‘republican’ argo-economy. Although this is nominally accepted as part of the piquant of early Afrikanerdom (as you seem to suggest), it is perhaps more juridicious to consider alternative explanations. The de-escalation in access to non-local markets in the immediate post-Trek period or even the stark spatial environmental and geopolitical realities confronted by the early trekkers could be considered more primary causes. Indeed, to suggest that the shift away from mass slavery was part of an ideological revisionism of previously acceptable cultural and political norms would be a gross misrepresentation of the ideological temperament of the time and would ignore new forms of labour ‘compulsion’ practices adopted by the trekkers. Indeed, the infamous ‘Master and Servants Acts’ adopted by the ‘republics’ in the 1850s (modeled on colonial juridical examples of the Cape Colony of course) could be considered a far more accurate representation of a general ideological paradigm shift towards new forms of labour coercion and discrimination that were to be later ‘perfected’ in the later part of the 19th century.

My belated response was not due to, as you seem to suggest, a deficiency of knowledge on my part but rather the chaotic work-schedule that informs my work at an establishment of higher learning. Normally, I would refrain from even a nominal attempt to address some of the gross inaccuracies that I am confronted with when I read comments on this website. But a rather beleaguered sense of my own educational vocation tempted me into this verbal maelstrom of accusation followed by counter-accusation. But I will admit that the lack of intellectual content that I am confronted with is at times so extreme that I have on occasioned dumbed down my own response to avoid habitual misrepresentation. For this apologise.